


the pressure that obtains

by Odense



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, discussion of self-endangerment and potentially suicidal behavior, includes works cited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 11:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19197544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odense/pseuds/Odense
Summary: (ten fathoms deep in care / ten fathoms down in an element denser than air)-Edna St Vincent Millay, Above These CaresI started by being utterly shocked that Legasov would leave his dosimeter off, and tried to explain how he would make that decision. What I ended up with turned out to look an awful lot like a preemptive suicide intervention, so if that’s upsetting material to anyone, please steer clear.That said, despite us all knowing how Legasov did pass, this conversation comes out the best for him.working title: /valera what the hell/





	the pressure that obtains

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Под этим бременем](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23079517) by [Lyna_SH](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyna_SH/pseuds/Lyna_SH)



> I don’t think Actual Historical Legasov would’ve hit the active level of suicidal thinking this early, but ideation and depression are real good buddies. Show!Legasov also doesn’t have the same support system in his family, so without that emotional/mental recourse and reason to get away from the plant every now and then, things would just generally be worse for him, unfortunately.

The call found him on a rise over the planned containment foundations by way of a soldier, mask dangling under his chin and a cap shading his eyes from the weak sunlight.

“Professor Legasov? There’s a message for you, from Comrade Shcherbina. He’s asking for you to come back to the hotel.”

“Come back?” Valery frowned at him, squinting through the glare on his glasses. He took them off and wiped them on the inside hem of his jacket, turning the haze into streaks when he returned them to his face. “He knows we’re getting work done out here, doesn’t he?”

“I’m sure he does, Professor. But I don’t know what he needs you for, only that he’s asking.”

“And it’s just me?” He sighed at the soldier’s nod and looked to Tarakanov. “General, the reins are yours.”

“I’ll do my best,” Tarakanov said dryly. “Go tell him I feel left out. And remember to ask him about the mix for the reinforced walls,” he called to Valery’s back.

\---

Valery stopped at the mobile office long enough to confirm that he was on his way, but only reached as far as the operator at the front desk. It wasn’t the first time either of them had waited to speak in person. It also wasn’t as though they were so much less overheard even face-to-face in the hotel, but there was the principle of the thing.

The truck rumbled back up the road, following a bus of men going back to the camps after their shift. Valery gave his glasses a better cleaning and looked up at the low clouds that had lingered for the past week. Assuming they weren’t really just inspired by the reactor’s various fumes, he debated the pros and cons to a fall of rain. On the upside, it might clear the air, relatively speaking at least. On the other hand, it would drop everything back down onto them, and put water back onto the core.

Still. Better if it could come back on us than letting it go any further, he decided, and turned away from the window.

At the Polissya, he dismissed the car and hurried into the enclosed lobby. The agent behind the desk today was a nondescript man ostensibly reading a magazine, but Valery could feel his drooping eyes following him until the elevator doors closed.

Really, he thought to himself, watching the floors pass by, he didn’t need the reminder that they were being watched. It wasn’t something that could easily be forgotten. Boris wouldn’t have either, though, and he wondered if they would take a walk before the clouds broke.

\---

Valery raised his hand to knock at the door to Boris’s suite, but paused, seeing his own door ajar. 

“Boris?” he asked, standing between their doors in the hall.

“Here,” came the answer from his own quarters, and Valery followed. “I needed a report and something’s come up.”

He pushed the door open slowly, not expecting to be greeted by a haze. 

“Are you smoking my cigarettes?” Valery asked, bemused. 

Boris shrugged, shoulders rising over the back of the chair. “They calm you down, don’t they? And I needed something to do with my hands while I waited.”

“How long have you been waiting, then? What did the welders say, anyway?”

“They can wait. You left something here, Valery.” Boris’s voice was leaden, and Valery found himself suddenly apprehensive. He approached the coffee table slowly, and felt his stomach drop at the sight of his dosimeter badge lying out in the light next to the room’s ashtray.

“Ah. I must have forgotten it, this morning,” he began. “I don’t even recall where I had left it.”

“In the back of your papers,” Boris gestured at his makeshift desk against the wall with the hand holding the cigarette before bringing it back and taking another drag. “Under them, in fact.”

Valery sat down slowly in the other chair and reached for the badge. Before he could pick it up, Boris darted forward and grabbed it from the tabletop, brandishing it in front of his face and snarling at him. “Look at this, what is this! Tell me what it says, Valery!” 

“It’s my badge! And I can’t read it when you’re waving it around,” Valery protested, making a grab for it, but Boris yanked it back. He slapped the dosimeter down onto the table and pulled another out of his own jacket pocket.

“That’s mine,” he stabbed a finger at it. “And this, yours,” he held up the first one again, “is either broken in an extremely interesting way, or I want to know how they’re telling the stories they are.”

“Broken, you say,” Valery said weakly, reaching for his own pocket and pulling out the cigarettes there. 

“Don’t,” Boris put up a hand, taking a short breath. “Don’t try that. Not on me, don’t to this to me.” He stubbed out the cigarette and rubbed at his eyes. “Just tell me why it’s so low.”

Instead of answering, Valery kept his head down, lighting up. 

“Don’t insult my intelligence. You’ve been onsite so much more than I have, lately, but this badge hasn’t. Fat lot of good it does you, buried under memoranda.” Boris ground his teeth at Valery’s silence. “Fine, your Deputy Directorness. Is this some new technique you’re working on? Give me something, here.”

Valery braced his elbows against his knees, shoulders hunched at the sarcasm. He blew the smoke out away from the table.

“The Institute doesn’t need to know exactly what I’m being exposed to. Neither do I.”

Boris’s fist slammed into the coffee table. “Bullshit! You can’t be doing this, Valery! You can’t risk yourself like this!”

“But we’re already risking ourselves!” Valery raised his voice to match Boris’s, sitting up to meet his furious gaze. “We agreed to the costs the moment we came here, or at least I did! From the first meeting, I knew this would have to happen. You know there’s no real way to wash this off of ourselves and ever recover, we’re already in the thick of it. So it doesn’t - It doesn’t matter, alright, for once, if we know or not. It’s already happening. It’s already too late!”

He took a ragged breath, leaning forward again against the pain in his back, and pulled off his glasses to press the bridge of his nose. 

“I’m doing everything I can. But I can’t focus on what needs to be done if I’m obsessing over myself, instead. I know what’s happening. But please, Boris, don’t make me think about it.”

The grainy clouds shifted, letting a fresh shaft of light lancing down through the window. Valery winced back from the abrupt glare, adjusting his glasses and moving out of its angle. Boris stared down at their badges for a long moment before speaking.

“Then tell me what’s happening, Valera. Just once. If you won’t think about it, I will.”

Boris’s voice was low and serious, and Valery forced himself to nod, finding himself unable to speak. He ran a hand back through his hair and fixed his eyes on the thin line still rising from the ashtray. Boris deserved the truth, though.

“My hands,” he admitted, turning over reddened knuckles. “Anything hot is too hot on my palms. And my throat is always sore. Between this air and the cigarettes I don’t want to think about my lungs. And the nausea comes and goes. I don’t know if eating a full meal would be a help or hindrance, but I’m not managing it in any case.” He took a drag. “And I don’t know of anyone who sleeps well here, but I think I’m still thinking clearly enough, so it’s not a problem yet.”

“Yet,” Boris echoed him, something distant in his tone, but Valery couldn’t bring himself to look back up. “What happens when it does become a problem, then?”

He shrugged. “Then it’ll be our turn at hospital six, I suppose. I’m sure we’re on the shortlist, if there’s room when it comes to it. Unless the firemen and liquidators and engineers have already poisoned the place and they shut it down before we make it.”

Boris’s frown only deepened.

“Put it this way.” He paused to tap ash into the tray. “The more time I spend out there, the less time someone else puts in. I have the capacity to make decisions, and I don’t need training and orientation all over again. It’s a savings of time and lives.”

Boris nodded, jaw tight. “At the cost of your own.”

“Is that really such a surprise, though?” He looked up. “We count lives every day, Boris. Costs, benefits, balance. A lost cause, a sunk expense. Or a stranger.” He weighed them in his hands, holding up the second. “It comes out better than it could. That counts, here and now.”

“A lost cause. Is that what you think of yourself.” 

Valery opened his mouth but paused before speaking, finding himself with a bitter smile. “Well. Who are you going to trust? That badge, or me?”

“Valery,” Boris sighed and pressed a hand to his forehead, wrinkling it. “What exactly have you been getting up to, then?”

Valery met his glare evenly and took a drag. “Do you think there’s anything we could be doing here that’s actually safe? You got the reports. I got information for them, for us all. I got done what we needed to be done, and I’m not going to apologize for it.”

Boris crossed his arms, considering. 

“You know, the way that they cycle-”

“You higher-ups for two weeks here, I know. Welcome back, by the way; I’m sorry this was your greeting.” Boris tried to go on, but Valery waved him back down. “I know. Where would I go, though? Your daughter needs to see you. I was contemplating a cat, before you called. I’m not missed or missing like you are.” His filter started to smolder, and he quickly stubbed it out. “And believe it or not, I want to be here. I think, more than anything else, I’m getting something done, here.” 

“I could order you back to Moscow,” Boris suggested, voice even and dark. “You could work from the Institute.”

Valery shrugged. If this was recklessness, finally speaking out loud made it worth it. “You could. You can,” he agreed. “But that would be your own choice, and you have to respect that this is mine.

“I’m not going into this blindly. I knew what was going to happen first of anyone, apparently,” he added, pride bitter in the back of his throat. “I’m not embracing what will happen with some sort of willful ignorance, but I’m just,” he took a breath, “I’m not hiding from it, either.”

Boris didn’t answer for a moment, his silence heavy in the still room.

“It’s what’s coming for us all, then,” he finally agreed. “But you’re far more comfortable with it than the rest of us.”

Valery could feel the censure without meeting his eye. But it wasn’t as though he could take any of it back.

“At least we’ll be out of press conferences when we’re falling to bits,” he offered. “You always complain about those.”

“It’ll go that far, then?”

Valery looked up, realising the truth only as the words left him. “Boris. Yevdokimovich,” he added, balancing the weight of his full name with a weak smile. “I don’t intend to find out.” 

It hit Boris in stages, and Valery couldn’t bring himself to apologize this time, watching the other man sag in the chair, boneless with shock again because of something he’d said.

“I don’t - You can’t -”

“We have a job to do,” Valery said firmly, even meaning it. “That comes first. Obviously. We’re going to cover the plant and seal it shut tight, and we’re going to go back to Moscow and the whole world and make sure this never happens again.” He paused, something stirring. “Which reminds me, Tarakanov wants to know what you think about the best concrete mix for the reinforced walls.”

“Izyumov’s,” Boris answered automatically, and blinked. “But don't divert me. The General can wait; what you just said was -”

“Opinion, not fact, and therefore less than useful,” Valery said brusquely. 

“Maybe. Maybe not.” 

Valery looked up, unsure at his tone. Boris leaned forward and tapped the tabletop, dosimeters in front of him. 

“I’ll make you a deal. You wear this. You don’t have to look at it, turn it backwards if you like, but keep it on your person when we’re out there. Give it to me and I’ll look at it. And you’ll tell me if you start to feel worse. And I’ll deal with it. Yeah, I will,” he continued, seeing the hesitation on Valery’s face. “I got you 5000 tons of sand and boron, a regular meal is easy.”

Valery stared at the badges for a moment, searching for his voice. Boris waited for him, and something detached in Valery was impressed by his patience.

“You make it sound so simple.”

“My job is,” Boris nodded. “It isn’t, but getting things in places is still a damn sight simpler than determining what we need in the first place.”

“That is a vast understatement and disservice to both of our jobs.”

“I know. That’s why only I can say it. Because it’s our jobs and I outrank you.” He let out a breath. “But that’s how this works, doesn’t it? You tell me what’s wrong. I fix it. This is what we do.” He looked Valery in the eye. “We need you. So if you won’t look out for yourself, someone else has to.”

Valery blinked. “You don’t have to, though.”

“That’s funny. Who else, or would you take this from Comrade Silayev?” Boris shook his head. “No,, you listen to me. You are not allowed to make the call as to how disposable you are. This project is bigger than you, bigger than any of us, and we don’t get to welcome what it’s giving us.” He paused, pointed, and Valery reluctantly met his gaze. “I won’t take you off this. We need you too much for that. But I will have you taken off the site. This dance you’re doing,” he gestured at the badges, “it stops now.” 

Boris waited, watching him, and Valery had to look away again. Through the window, the clouds had re-kint overhead from their day’s allowance of sun, and far below them, the browning rose bushes swayed in an evening wind.

“We’re all dying, Valera. Don’t ask it to come any faster than it already will.” 

“Alright,” he finally whispered. “I’ll try. Your idea, I’ll do it.”

Across the low table, Boris let out a breath, and Valery realised how tightly he had been holding himself, waiting for the answer. 

“Good man.” 

Abruptly, he stood up, tucking both of the badges into the pocket of his jacket and gathering the report in the crook of his arm. “Alright, come on.”

Valery stood with him, fixing the button of his jacket and then remembering to ask, “Come on where?”

“Downstairs,” Boris gestured at the door, impatient. “Where you’ll catch up on the lunch I’m sure you skipped, and catch me up on this thing,” he waved the report. “I didn’t have my head in the sand while I was out in the world, but there’s more detail in your brain than could fit on these pages.”

“It’s true,” Valery surprised himself with a chuckle. “If some of what I see here landed on my desk at the Institute, I’d have to know who wrote it and just who on earth hired them.”

“Getting high and mighty on us, Professor? Should I even ask what you’d do to this with a red pen?” 

“Get me a red pen, then. I’ll show you.”

Boris laughed, and the door swung shut behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> Symptoms rundown: Tan (1), sore throat (2), loss of appetite (2), pancreatitis (pain that lets up when leaning forward) (2), insomnia (anxiety, nicotine, radiation) (1, 2). Alopecia is starting to bend the rules, waiting as long as it did. Light sensitivity and difficulty in decontaminating thicker skin eg the palms are general side-effects of exposure.  
> I don’t want to actually get into his serious symptoms. And I don’t know the exact timeline of when each would start to manifest. This is as much detail as I want to get into, right here, but I also don’t want to seem like I’m pulling them out of the air for the text.
> 
> Other hiccups: As a Californian born and bred, my ideas of levels of formality in address are nothing at all like in Russian or Ukrainian. Thank you to Caterina for catching me up on how I was using nicknames; I tried to restrict myself down to what would have impact but of course, all remaining linguistic/cultural inaccuracies are my own.  
> Relatedly, I know Mazin made a point of putting the ‘comrade’s back into his script. I tried to do the same, but it still feels really awkward and they might not all be where they need to be. Also, I capitalized like any formal title, but that just feels even stranger. I’m really not sure on those.  
> Also, English is so missing out with only one form of ‘you’. I miss being more fluent in French, tutoiement is such an important layer! If I could still write like I could three years ago, I’d give it a go for this series as well, just for that utility.
> 
> Additional thanks to Cam for lending the final pair of eyes - this isn't their fandom or genre, but they certainly know something about how I write conversations, and they give me the last green light to go ahead!
> 
> But: engineers are terrible writers. Vital work, my deepest admiration for scientists, but going from lab to report is a nightmare. That, I’ll stand by.
> 
> This is a good deal longer than my other fic, and has a correspondingly larger margin for error. As ever, whenever I get something wrong, please do feel free to point me back on track.
> 
> Works cited:  
> 1) Yaroshevsky, Alexey. “Chernobyl blast:Valery Legasov's battle”. RT. TV-Novosti, pub. 27 Apr, 2008. Ed. 28 Apr, 2008. via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpvvccmG2dE  
> 2) Самоделова, Светлана. “Как убивали академика Легасова, который провел собственное расследование Чернобыльской катастрофы” Mk.Ru. Московский комсомолец, 26 апреля 2017 https://www.mk.ru/social/2017/04/25/kak-ubivali-akademika-legasova-kotoryy-provel-sobstvennoe-rassledovanie-chernobylskoy-katastrofy.html  
> -> Samodelova, Svetlana. Trans. Google Translate. “How Academician Legasov was killed, who conducted his own investigation of the Chernobyl disaster.” Mk.Ru. Moskovsky Komsomolets, 26 April 2017  
> -> I know gtranslate is far from perfect, but I’ve had luck with it for technical jargon despite syntax issues, and ‘myelocytes’ is pretty unambiguous, so I’m rolling with it but will defer to a better translation as soon as it exists  
> -> NB that this one also talks about the dosimeter issue itself  
> Additional reading:  
> -> For a further account of the dosimeter issue, I’ve been directed to Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe, by Serhii Plokhy, published 2018, though I haven’t found a copy yet myself. But the reviews are all good.  
> \--> Thank you tryingtobealwaystrying to setting me on this track; I think their post was the first place I heard about the dosimeter shenanigans back when, and then they were super encouraging on the research front!  
> -> For notes and citations on the turnover of leadership onsite, Shcherbina's absence, and the cement situation, I ran out of space in the endnotes and will direct anyone who might be interested to my dreamwidth: @ 0dense.dreamwidth.org/18932.html


End file.
